The Eiffel Tower, they say, is visible from the top of the final mountain pass of the Tour de France, but Sam Bennett (Bora-Argon 18) didn’t have time to admire the metaphorical view as he crested the summit of the Col de Joux Plane in miserable conditions on Saturday afternoon and began to descend towards the finish of stage 20.
More than 34 minutes after Ion Izagirre (Movistar) had claimed stage honours, the gruppetto – with Bennett safely aboard – finally entered the sodden finishing straight in Morzine, drifting across the finish line just as maillot jaune Chris Froome (Sky) was touring the mixed zone behind the podium.
Soigneurs stepped into the road to pick out their riders from the line-up of haunted faces and thousand-yard stares that drifted by. Bennett and his teammate Andreas Schillinger wheeled to a halt just past the finish line to seek directions to their hotel, too tired for elation or even relief.
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“It’s hard to say what I feel, I’m just a bit fucked at the minute,” Bennett told Cyclingnews. “I didn’t think I was going to make it today, so I’m happy to finish. Schilli did a great job of helping me and pacing me. It was just a hard day from the beginning.”
Cruelly, this Tour has shoehorned its toughest stages into its final days. For four days, the fast men like Bennett must have felt cloistered by Alps, and heavy rain soaked the peloton for much of Saturday afternoon to boot. A day shy of Paris, his Tour remained a quest for survival.
“From the start I had bad legs. I had good legs yesterday but it was a total turnaround today. From the beginning I had nothing. I pushed too hard on the first climb to stay with them. And then I blew on the next climb, got back on. Blew before the third climb, and the gruppetto started there and I just got back in and just tried to stay in the rest of the day,” Bennett said.
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